The RIAA and the LOONY lawsuits it files.....AY-YI-YI (1 Viewer)

[Laura Nicholson]

I would buy the artists I really like, if I could find them anywhere. I've yet to find a legitimate place that sells new Lustmord, for example. If I wanted to buy the actual album "Heresy", I would either have to find the correct album on eBay, (and with my luck get into a bidding war), or try a site like half.com where you can buy used from $58! And either way, no money goes to the artist. If I could find the type of music I listen to, I would buy it.

 

[MarkHastings]

Yeah, but if they sued every last one of those "millions" of people, imagine the $$ loss the music industry would endure due to animosity.

and they thought "illegal downloading" is hurting the industry

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

How nice of the RIAA to drop a lawsuit that in all likelyhood shouldn't have been filed in the first place, as others have said I'd love to agree with some of the things that they stand for and then they just make these kinds of decisions that only serve to make them look bad, the RIAA is undermining its own point if you think about it.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

Of course this can be used to dispute the RIAA's information gathering process. This isn't the first case where the RIAA sued someone who obviously wasn't guilty; I believe it was a Mac user who got sued for using a PC only program or some such, and the person in question didn't exactly fit the downloader profile then either with regards to age and other particulars.

The RIAA doesn't really do the lawsuits in order to punish specific people, they do them simply as examples and in order to raise fear in the minds of people who do download. The people who get trampled by the lawsuits are just unlucky targets used as cautionary tales by the RIAA.

The really annoying things are, of course, that the artists themselves are often quite happy about having their work spread which gives them free advertising. Only a minute percentage of artists ever so much as break even when it comes to record contracts; this is pure big corporation evil done with the purpose of protecting their bottom line, because the record companies are the only parties who actually make big money off music. No matter what the RIAA claims, it has nothing to do with the artist and certainly isn't in the interest of the average citizen to turn minor copyright violations into felonies.

In spite of that, laws keep getting more and more nutty with people actually getting threatened with prison sentences over downloading a few songs... well, I'm glad I'm not living in "the land of the free" these days.

Good link on the topic of music and lawsuits and stuff:

http://www.downhillbattle.org/